Mark Argent speaks at Hunts LibDems Annual Dinner

Our Prospective Parliamentary Candidate, Mark Argent, spoke at our Annual Dinner on 2 March.

He spoke about the forthcoming County Council by election in Yaxley, where we have a super candidate in Andrew Wood. Winning would send big shock waves, and is a very real possibility. It’s also very much part of a Liberal Democrat commitment to local government. Andrew will be a welcome addition to our team of hard-working and able councillors, dedicated to their communities. While the Tories have done a lot to undermine trust in government, and national politics, our team of councillors show that good things can happen when Liberal Democrats are elected, which is a message to take into the General Election.

To many people the idea of “politics as public service” or “people before politics” is now sounding hollow. That’s turning up the alienation from politics (particularly the Conservatives) we’re hearing on the doorsteps. A sign of how much things have changed is seeing some comments a couple of years ago from John Major — visibly a Conservative, visibly a statesman, and excoriating the Johnson government with a killer phrase: “A majority gives you power. It doesn’t give you license to do whatever you want”. There’s a huge gap between that and what we’ve seen with Boris Johnson and Liz Truss. In 2019 John Major also described Brexit as “The biggest foreign policy mistake of my lifetime”.

He mentioned a recent tweet from the editor of Liberal Democrat Voice about Lee Anderson’s crass and Islamophobic comments on Sadiq Khan, and his alarm at a response saying “The majority of people in the country agree with him. It’s only you lefties who don’t”. Is that the Britain we’re building? Liberal Democrat values offer an alternative to this — and might also address the groundless fear that lies behind that response.

Many people are disillusioned with the Conservatives. Although they will find it easier to vote for us than for Labour, many will either not vote, or vote Conservative anyway out of a sense of “hang on to nurse for fear of something worse”: our task is to encourage then to vote Liberal Democrat so that we can make a difference.

Mark finished with an appeal — for help in Yaxley, for help going into the General Election, and for help putting Liberal Democrat values to voters this year.